ABF Speeds and Expands Its Regional Service

These latest upgrades reduce transit times in more than 25% of the carrier's North American network.

Faster transit times are offered in 24,000 station-to-station lanes. Included are some 1,300 new next-day lanes and 21,000 new second-day lanes. These enhancements are part of ABF's Regional Performance Model (RPM) introduced for coverage along the Eastern Seaboard in 2006. Regional service for the Eastern two-thirds of the US followed in early 2007. The carrier intends to expand RPM to the Western US by the end of the year in order to provide next-day and second-day service throughout the country.

Running in tandem with ABF's long-haul network, RPM offers shippers the ability to deal with just one carrier to handle regional, inter-regional and long-haul freight. The one stop service offers common pickup, delivery, sales and customer service.

“ABF's most recent expansion of its regional service is now in place,” notes Wes Kemp, the company's president and COO, “resulting in additional transit-time improvements in tens of thousands of new regional lanes. In fact, we've been successfully executing the latest enhancements for almost a month now, refining the new service before introducing it to the market.”

With these changes in effect, the carrier claims to have reduced transit time by at least one day in more than 445 million zip-to-zip combinations.